Death From Above 1979 – Blood On Your Hands
I bought the record on which this song features almost six years ago in a small store, now closed, along a pedestrian street in Carlow town. Pink covered with elephant-man illustration. You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine. On its fifth track, ‘Blood On Our Hands’, pedal driven bass blasts entire and unstoppable on song’s entry, accompanied by vexed vocals of rooted and wanton observation and admission. “You’re a woman, we both know it’s true from the things that I’ve done to you,” spills lead vocalist Sebastien Grainger as he ignores reluctance with an opulent indictment of said possible lover, “There is blood on all the shoes you’ve worn from the people you’ve been stepping on.”
The fiery tantrum then collapses to a hushed end, steering through drums of next-door realism and sensitivity, awash with subtle lines of pop-organ that feed care and a solemn finish to the preceding chaos and violent abandon, each note plummeting to depths of a celebratory funeral procession. Any flaws that may exist are stainless and fraught with riotous drive. This is the least customary of all songs in that it may be entirely flawless. [Purchase.]